Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Claude Opus 4.8
2026 - Pricing, benchmarks, and use case comparison
Quick take
- •Claude Haiku 4.5 is 95% cheaper on input tokens - better for high-volume workloads.
- •Both models come from Anthropic. Claude Haiku 4.5 targets higher capability; Claude Opus 4.8 is the faster, cheaper tier.
Specs comparison
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | Claude Opus 4.8 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Anthropic |
| Type | Closed source | Closed source |
| Context window | 200K | 200K |
| Input / 1M tokens | ✓$0.80 | $15.00 |
| Output / 1M tokens | $4.00 | $75.00 |
| Release date | 2025-10 | 2026-05 |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Claude Haiku 4.5 | Claude Opus 4.8 |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU | ~82% | - |
| HumanEval | ~88% | - |
Scores sourced from official provider release posts.
Strengths
Claude Haiku 4.5
- ✓Lowest latency in the Claude lineup
- ✓Extremely cost-effective at scale
- ✓Strong at classification and extraction
- ✓Good at following structured output schemas
- ✓Handles 200K context at low cost
Claude Opus 4.8
- ✓Best-in-class multi-step reasoning
- ✓Improved instruction following over Opus 4.7
- ✓Reduced refusals on edge-case and nuanced requests
- ✓Superior long-context comprehension at 200K tokens
- ✓Strong scientific and mathematical analysis
Which should you choose?
Choose Claude Haiku 4.5 if you need...
- →High-volume API pipelines
- →Real-time classification
- →Form and document extraction
- →Low-latency chatbots
Choose Claude Opus 4.8 if you need...
- →Complex research and analysis tasks
- →High-stakes code generation
- →Long-document analysis
- →Nuanced reasoning requiring careful judgment